Westport schools will start the school year with a new focus on career training. Read on.

WESTPORT — Westport High School students will have a new opportunity this school year, with the launch of new programming aimed at technical job training along the lines of what may be found at a vocational high school.

The Westport Community School District is calling it "neo-technical" programming. Superintendent Thomas Aubin says this type of program is something the district had been eyeing for a number of years but until now could not find a feasible means to deliver.

"When I came onboard, the School Committee wanted to start technical programming ... because for our kids, obviously we only get a certain amount into the vocational or agricultural school," Aubin said, referencing Diman Regional Voc-Tech High School in Fall River and Bristol County Agricultural High School in Dighton.

"We ran into two problems: no money and no space."

However, Aubin said the district found a way to use technology to overcome those hurdles. Whereas technical education usually demands a great deal of physical space and equipment, Westport High students will be walking through technical tasks virtually using the district's new zSpace laptops.

These state-of-the-art instruments, often used in architectural drafting, take digital interaction to a level beyond the standard computer or device. As they are capable of detecting users' eye movements, zSpace provides full three-dimensional views of objects that can be moved and manipulated by the user.

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"They're three-dimensional without having to use any special glasses," Aubin said.

According to Aubin, areas of study the district looks to use zSpace to explore are: advanced manufacturing, biotech/health care, the construction cluster (e.g. carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, etc.), and IT, or information technology.

'Career exploration' to start in lower grades

The zSpace laptops — purchased through grant funds procured by Sen. Michael Rodrigues — and neo-technical programming they'll help facilitate make up only one component of the district's new efforts. Before high school, students will be exposed to new "career exploration" programming to get them thinking about their futures early.

"Career exploration will happen in grades 5-12 through courses where connections are made between theoretical and practical learning and the application of this learning in real-world careers," explained Westport Community Schools Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development Lisa Kaminski.

This type of learning, Kaminski said, "will intensify at the high school level where Neo-Technical Programming is infused into current courses and is the main focus in new courses that are being developed and will launch in the second semester of this school year."

While enrollment in neo-technical programming will be limited at first when it launches this fall, the district's goal is to continually broaden its reach. For now, the district has been using what precious little time it has before school starts on Aug. 29 to continue refining how the program will run.

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"We are still working out when and where these opportunities will happen, and we know that students who are enrolled in Career and College Readiness will have access, students who are enrolled in 'Internship' or 'Work Study' will have access, and we will be supporting teachers in incorporating these offerings into their existing curricula," Kaminski said. "Our goal is that every student will have access to these opportunities over their middle-high school experience at Westport Middle High School."

Students will graduate with useful portfolio and a head start

Aside from zSpace, another resource helping Westport schools make considerable headway into the realm of technical education is a grant through the National Education Foundation (NEF). This grant, Aubin said, opens up access to a plethora of certifications and credentials students can earn, including in OSHA regulations, Microsoft Office, social media marketing, and job-specific certifications from companies like Google and Amazon.

"The NEF grant allows us to offer our students up to 10,000 courses," Aubin said.

Then, by the time students graduate, Aubin said, they will take with them a portfolio that includes all the various technical programming completions and credentials earned throughout their years at Westport Community Schools. Aubin said the district also hopes to continue building relationships with local employers so that students who aim to work out of high school have head starts. In fact, if all goes according to plan, Aubin says all students will have the opportunity to graduate with a head start on whichever path they choose.

"We already have contacts with area unions and tech businesses and what we're hoping to do ... is once students develop an interest in a certain area, is to match them with businesses that may be in need of employees," Aubin said. "The ultimate goal is ... once students have gone through this system, by senior year they should have earned enough credits to do early college, start working in the trades, start their own business, join the military, as early as second semester of senior year."

More new things coming to Westport

Another new development administrators hope to see debut in Westport this school year is a new K-12 financial literacy program through a partnership with a local bank.

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"We're looking towards the second semester of this year; if not, the start of the '25 school year," Aubin said, noting the district is actively in talks with a certain bank in the area, which he chose not to identify as arrangements were not finalized.

Through the banking partnership, Aubin says it's his hope that, in addition to a solid portfolio, students will be able to open up a real bank account and, after years of learning the ins and outs of finance, graduate with some starter money for whatever endeavors they pursue.

"Whether they choose to go to college, or start a business, purchase tools for a trade, they’ll have seed money to get going," he said.

While there are pre-packaged financial literacy courses available which could be obtained more quickly and easily, Aubin says it will be worthwhile for the district to craft its own.

"To me, it has to have an experiential component, which would be starting a bank account," he said.

"We're also going to be tying in digital literacy because you can learn all you want about investments, but if you don't understand your phone is designed to make you a lifelong customer, you're going to continue to spend money and not understand why you're not accumulating wealth."

'Neo-tech' outlook includes adult programming

While there isn't yet a distinct timeline for it, Aubin says another goal of the district is to, "in the not-too-distant future," open up technical programming to adults in the community to address needs not as commonly highlighted as others often are.

"This new initiative about free college for anybody 25 and over who doesn’t have a degree is nice for people who fit into that but we have a lot of people who do have degrees but may not be working in jobs that they want. So we believe there’s a demand for this in our community," Aubin said. "We also recognize that with this A.I. and things like ChatGPT, it’s going to be white collar workers that are going to be affected and they’re going to have to learn these tools themselves."

Aubin said the district plans to release a survey sometime this year to assess which technical areas adults in Westport would be interested in.

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And as the district moves toward more universal availability for high school students, Aubin says this year's run will serve as a test to determine how to best proceed with its expansion.

"It’s evolving," he said. "This is the first year and we’re going to see where our strengths and weaknesses are in the program and then adjust accordingly."

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New technical training program to launch at Westport schools